You Can Try Mass Effect: Andromeda For 10 Hours, For Free

If all the problems and videos online stopped you from giving Andromeda a go, fair enough. But if you'd like to get a taste of the latest Mass Effect nonetheless, you can now play the game for free for 10 hours.

The timed demo is available on all platforms, although at the time of writing only the Xbox One and Origin links were functional. According to the details, you'll be able to play "unlimited multiplayer" and up to "the first planet" in singleplayer, with all progress carrying over should you decide to purchase the game afterwards.

If you haven't played Andromeda yet, it's not a bad time to do so. The game has gotten a lot of quality of life improvements since release, and it's a fun exercise to play through the game knowing a lot of the troubles it faced during development, which you can read about below.

In 2012, as work on Mass Effect 3 came to a close, a small group of top BioWare employees huddled to talk about the next entry in their epic sci-fi franchise. Their goal, they decided, was to make a game about exploration -- one that would dig into the untapped potential of the first three games. Instead of visiting just a few planets, they said, what if you could explore hundreds?

I recommended this from day one, even with all the bugs I encountered it was a truly worthy entry in the series that grabbed me immediately. I was skeptical about the kid-wonder Ryder, but the storytelling sold me 100%, in versimilitude and surprises. Notepads and codex entries have a love paid to them, giving unsettling hints at major plot points down the track, building a new and well-realized world in ways that made me care. The mechanics are even more refined than the previous games, making this a sure-fire recommendation.

I cannot understand anyone who complained about anything other than the bugs (of which I encountered many). This was SO very Mass Effect.

i got half way before i said screw it and started using them.. i still had something like 12 when i finished.. we've all been there.. having 500 health potions we never use because one day we MIGHT need them

It wasn't so much that they were tough, it was just they were dull and tedious. I love puzzle games but the Sudoku was boring and the 'redirect power' terminals felt like they belonged in some student programmer's first Unity game

I will buy it when I can get it for between $30 and $35 on ozgameshop, because ain't no way I'm rewarding EA and Bioware for the trashy shit that they squeezed out. Andromeda looks like something to be ashamed of, and EA and Bioware SHOULD be ashamed of it. In case you can't tell, ME1, 2 and 3 were some of my GOAT games, so seeing this dejected puddle of spew made me sad.

I am going to wait til it is $7.50 digitally before rebuying (bought the physical and traded after completing the main questline), seeing as Inquisition GOTY edition regularly gets discounted that far. I can see MEA doing the same. Then will bother with all the busywork. I finished without even visiting about 3 of the main planets.

This game is by a wide margin the worst Mass Effect game ever released by a wide margin BUT it is still a Mass Effect game and despite being a broken buggy mess with a pisspoor story i still had fun with it

That's what shits me the most - the fans of ME1-3 don't have any other choice than to pick this up and make the best of it. It's not like there's anything else on the horizon. Shit ME is better than no ME.

ME Andromeda has been pretty fantastic so far, if only really from the particular angle I was excited about - exploration. In my eyes it's a game that wasn't meant as a sequel to ME 2 and 3, but rather a spinoff / soft-reboot of ME 1.

The Nomad is fantastic, the design of the worlds is -just- gamey enough that it's fun to traverse, but not so gamey that it's unbelievable as a world and the scale of each planet is fantastic. Mind you this comes from the perspective of someone that thinks ME 2 was the worst in the franchise, loved the empty planets of ME 1 and actually liked that ME 1 recycled a lot of the side quest level design (it added to the sense that it was a real world, each pre-fab building would look the same in a real-world scenario).

Obviously the game has issues, I had a pretty horrible time in the opening ~10 hours where half of the cutscenes would crash the game and I couldn't get past the becoming a pathfinder cutscene at all, not to mention the facial animations (which are pretty bad).

If you stick with it though and play it the way it wants to be played (less of a driving narrative as defined the franchise previously, a looser approach to class/weapon/ability choices etc.) it is absolutely fantastic, warts and all. If you played ME 1, looked up at the sky boxes on empty planets and got shivers this is the only game I've played since that comes close to giving me that feeling again.